Date: Fri, 04 Aug 95 13:21:46 EST Errors-To: Comp-privacy Error Handler From: Computer Privacy Digest Moderator To: Comp-privacy@uwm.edu Subject: Computer Privacy Digest V7#010 Computer Privacy Digest Fri, 04 Aug 95 Volume 7 : Issue: 010 Today's Topics: Moderator: Leonard P. Levine Re: Phone Sales Re: Caller ID Blockers Re: Wisconsin Operator's License Re: Wisconsin Operator's License Re: CPD FTP & Email Services Termination House Adopts Exon-Like Speech Crimes and Cox/Wyden Amendment Re: Defeating Signature Scans by Sears Conferences/Events of Interest Total Surveillance on the Highway Info on CPD ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Privacy Rights Clearinghouse Date: 01 Aug 1995 17:17:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: Phone Sales Below are some excerpts from our Fact Sheet #5, "Telemarketing: Whatever Happened To A Quiet Evening At Home?". This fact sheet (and 17 others) are available online at . Brad Biddle, Legal Intern Privacy Rights Clearinghouse CA HOTLINE: 1-800-773-7748 OUTSIDE CA: +1-619-298-3396 gopher://pwa.acusd.edu/11/USDinfo/privacy ftp://ftp.acusd.edu/pub/privacy Taken from Fact Sheet #5: [...] *Are there any laws about telemarketing?* Yes, both state and federal laws regulate telephone solicitations. 1. *"Do not call" lists.* The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (47 USC section 227) requires telemarketers to take you off their list if you ask them to do so. They must maintain "do not call" lists of all residences who do not want to be contacted. If you have received more than one call by or on behalf of the same company in one year, after you have told the company to place your name on the "do not call list", you can: a) File a suit in state court (usually small claims court is recommended). You may recover up to $500 for each time the telemarketer called you after you requested to be placed on the do not call list. In addition, you may be awarded up to $1500 if the telemarketer willfully or knowingly broke the law. b) Request that the Attorney General in your state file a suit against the telemarketer. If the Attorney General receives several complaints against the same telemarketer, it may file suit on behalf of the residents of the state. c) File a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and request that the FCC take enforcement action against the telemarketer. Nonprofit and tax-exempt organizations are not required to keep "do not call" lists. (For more details about "do not call" procedures, see 47 CFR Part 64.1200.) Privacy tip: If you want to take action against a company that continues to call, send a certified letter, return receipt requested, demanding to be placed on the "do not call" list. Keep a copy of the letter and the return receipt as proof. Also, keep a log of all calls. [...] Federal Communications Commission Informal Complaints and Public Inquiries Branch, Enforcement Division Common Carrier Bureau, Mail Stop 1600A2 Washington, D.C. 20554 [...] *For more information* The Center for the Study of Commercialism has a "stop the calls" telemarketing kit which you may obtain by sending $3.00 to: 1875 Connecticut Ave., N.W., #300, Washington D.C. 20009. The kit contains information, tips and forms to keep track of "do not call" requests. For a $20 annual fee, Private Citizen, a nonprofit organization, will list you in its "do not call" Private Citizen Directory which is distributed twice a year to over 1,400 telemarketing firms. Call (800) CUT-JUNK. For information on telemarketing fraud, contact the National Fraud Information Center at (800) 876-7060. [...] ------------------------------ From: trisha.pena@nashville.com (Trisha Pena) Date: 03 Aug 95 07:11:17 Subject: Re: Caller ID Blockers Organization: The Nashville Exchange BBS 615-383-0727 Athena Consulting said: I am very new to this CALLER ID concept. I just moved to LA from California where they do not allow the masses to have CID. I have seen a device you can purchase from specialty catalogs for like $40 that claims to stop your name and number from being read. Does anyone know if these work or not? Thanks! If you have an unpublished phone number, you can do the same thing by pressing *67 before you dial a number. It hides your number for that call only so you have to remember to do it everytime or add it as a "pre" in an autodialer. Trisha in Nashville. ... Trisha from Nashville http://www.nashville.com/member/trisha.html ___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12 ------------------------------ From: "Dennis G. Rears" Date: 02 Aug 95 9:27:39 EDT Subject: Re: Wisconsin Operator's License Professor L. Levine writes: This week the dropped the other shoe. From now on, if you get a parking ticket or do not pay civil fines they will extract the money from your Income Tax Refund. The SSN will be the link. This will mean megabucks for the State and for the Cities involved. This brings up a completely unrelated question to privacy ---> in this current environment where federal and state tax refunds can be tapped for everything from child support, fines, student loans, and for the latest government whims why would anyone purposely get a refund? I make it a point to owe every year. This way I have real proof I filed (my canceled check) also if they disagree with anything on my form they have to take the effort get the money from me as opposed to subtracting it from my refund. We have heard how this year the IRS has withheld refunds because SSN names (due to marriage/divorce) did not match the SSA database. -- dennis http://sunsite.unc.edu/drears/running/drears/drears.html ------------------------------ From: mikus@bga.com (Mikus Grinbergs) Date: 02 Aug 1995 15:02:46 -0500 Subject: Re: Wisconsin Operator's License Organization: Gone Walkabout Professor L. Levine wrote: This week the dropped the other shoe. From now on, if you get a parking ticket or do not pay civil fines they will extract the money from your Income Tax Refund. The SSN will be the link. This will mean megabucks for the State and for the Cities involved. I just hope they provide a problem-resolution method. What recourse do I have if Wisconsin uses my SSN to extract money from my Income Tax Refund? (I do not live in Wisconsin, nor have I given them my SSN.) I remember the time I had registered a green Vega (compact) station wagon in one state, and received notice from another state (not Wisc.) that, my not having paid a parking ticket for a white Cadillac having 'my-license-plate-number-including-state', they were going to take action against me. Luckily, the other state accepted my explanation that my car did not match the complaint, and did not pursue me further. (I figured my license plate # got in because of inaccurate data entry.) ------------------------------ From: "Dennis G. Rears" Date: 02 Aug 95 16:38:50 EDT Subject: Re: CPD FTP & Email Services Termination [moderator: Dennis Rears was the originator and original moderator of this newsgroup and list. He has held an archive for this group and now has to abandon it. I will be keeping the archives henceforth. See last posting of this newsletter.] As of August 15, I will have to terminate the remaining vestiges of the Computer Privacy Digest from pica.army.mil. This includes the ftp archives at ftp.pica.army.mil. This consists mainly of the digests that I worked on and a volume that Levine did. Len has copied over the old telecom-priv digests. Those old-timers out there will remember that the Computer Privacy Digest starting out as the Telecom Privacy digest. The Telecom Privacy Digest was in existence for a couple of years and then I expanded it into the Computer Privacy Digest and gatewayed it to the comp.society.privacy USENET newsgroup. The @pica.army.mil email addresses that I kept will be disappearing too. Believe it or not they are still being used on occassion. This is even though I transferred moderator duties over to Len in December of 1993. I have sent a separate message to the users of privacy-news. This list was used for those people who did not have access to USENET but wanted the digest an article at a time. Len wanted to know what I was up to. I am still reading CPD even though I haven't contributed much lately. I have been spending my free time creating "The Running Page", a WWW page for running. It's at http://sunsite.unc.edu/drears/running/running.html. Check it out. Keep it mind it is still under development. Also, check out my home page at http://sunsite.unc.edu/drears/running/drears/drears.html. Take care. -- dennis ------------------------------ From: ACLUNATL@aol.com Date: 04 Aug 1995 12:17:48 -0400 Subject: House Adopts Exon-Like Speech Crimes and Cox/Wyden Amendment ACLU Cyber-Liberties Alert: House Adopts Exon-Like Speech Crimes, Also Adopts Cox/Wyden Amendment At 9:10 am today, the House of Representatives voted to adopt an omnibus "Managers Amendment" to the telecommunications bill (HR 1555), which included new Exon-like speech crimes that would censor the Internet. At 11:58 am, the House of Representatives voted 420 to 4 to adopt the Cox/Wyden amendment to the telco bill. The Cox/Wyden amendment, however, was not designed to -- and does not -- affect the Exon-like speech crimes provisions added to the telco bill by the House. Speech Crimes Provisions in Managers Amendment: The Managers Amendment containing the new speech crimes provisions also contained some forty other unrelated amendments. The Exon-like provisions were not a focus of the debate, and it is likely that most members cast their votes for reasons unrelated to these provisions. The Managers Amendment adds an entirely new Exon-like provision to the existing federal obscenity laws. The provision would make it a crime to "intentionally communicate by computer ... to any person the communicator believes has not attained the age of 18 years, any material that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs." (18 U.S.C. 1465) This provision, like the Exon amendment passed by the Senate, would effectively reduce all online content to that which is suitable only for children. It also raises the same questions about service provider liability that were raised by the Exon amendment. The Managers Amendment would also make it a crime to "receive" prohibited material "by computer," thereby subjecting both Internet users and service providers to new prosecutions (18 U.S.C. 1462). Assuming that the House telco bill (HR 1555) is approved (which is highly probable by 3 pm today), both the House and Senate versions of the telco bill will include severe attacks on cyber-liberties. Cox/Wyden Amendment: The ACLU has supported the general approach of the Cox/Wyden amendment because it prohibits FCC regulation of content on the Internet and generally supports private sector initiatives, not government censorship, on cyberspace. As the ACLU has said before, there are several ambiguities and some real problems with the Cox/Wyden amendment. The two sponsors have committed to working with us on resolving the problems. (See previously posted ACLU Online Analysis of the Cox/Wyden Bill.) ----------------------------------------------------------- For the online community to take comfort in what is done in the final telco bill in the conference committee, at a minimum the following must occur: 1. The Senate's Exon/Coats amendment (the Communications Decency Act) must be rejected -- that is, deleted from the bill, not merely modified in some way. 2. The House's Exon-like speech crimes amendment must be rejected -- that is, deleted from the bill, not merely modified in some way. 3. The ambiguities and problems in the Cox/Wyden amendment must be resolved and then the Cox/Wyden amendment as modified should be included in the telco bill. The ACLU urges all those who care about free speech and personal privacy to focus their energized efforts on all three fronts of the fight. The ACLU will continue to fight all aspects of the cyber-censorship battle, including the Exon-like speech crimes provisions just passed by the House, the Exon/Coats amendment in the Senate, the Dole/Grassley anti-computer pornography bill, the Grassley anti-electronic racketeering bill, and the Feinstein anti-explosives information amendment to the counter-terrorism bill. ------------------------------ From: mcohen@charming.nrtc.northrop.com (Martin Cohen) Date: 02 Aug 1995 20:44:28 GMT Subject: Re: Defeating Signature Scans by Sears Organization: Northrop Grumman Automation Sciences Laboratory, Pico Rivera, CA Paul Robinson writes: Those of you who prefer not to have your signature scanned by Sears or other such places now have a method without requiring you make a scene or cause a problem. When I got a battery at Sears and paid with my Discover card, I just told the clerk that I did not want my signature digitized. She then filled out another form with a copy. I signed it and kept one copy. No hassle, no problems, even though she said that I was the first one to request this. -- Marty Cohen (mcohen@nrtc.northrop.com) - Not the guy in Philly This is my opinion and is probably not Northrop Grumman's! Use this material of your own free will ------------------------------ From: Susan Evoy Date: 03 Aug 1995 13:53:40 -0700 Subject: Conferences/Events of Interest CPSR Members and Friends, If you are planning to attend one of these conferences, or another that may be related to CPSR's work, please contact CPSR at cpsr@cpsr.org or (415) 322-3778 for easy ways for you to be a presence for CPSR. [moderator: this is an excerpted copy of that list to include only privacy related issues] CONFERENCE /EVENT SCHEDULE Good Morning America interview with Beth Givens, Director - Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, Aug. 4, 8 a.m. The Future of the Internet: Privacy, Security, and Parental Control, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA, Aug. 17th. Contact: acward@sjsuvm1.sjsu.edu 408 924-4523 Advanced Surveillance Technologies, Copenhagen, DENMARK, Sept. 4. Contact: pi@privacy.org http://cpsr.org/cpsr/privacy/privacy_international/pi.html 17th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners, Copenhagen, DENMARK, Sept. 6-8. Contact: 45 33 14 38 44 45 33 13 38 43 (fax) InfoWarCon '95, Arlington, VA, Sept. 7-8. Contact: winn@infowar.com Computer: Politisches Medium? Medium der Politik?, Bremen, GERMANY, September 15-16. Contact: res@informatik.uni-bremen.de49 421 218 3308 (fax) International Cryptography Institute 1995: Global Challenges, Washington, DC Sep. 21-22. Contact: denning@cs.georgetown.edu 800 301 MIND (US only) 202 962-9494 202 962-9495 (fax) The Good, the Bad, and the Internet, A Conference on the Big Issues in Information Technology, CPSR Annual Meeting, 750 South Halsted, Chicago Circle Center, University of Illinois - Chicago, IL, Oct. 7-8. Plenary sessions on: * State of the 'Net 1995: Commercialization, Access, Censorship, and more * Which way for Privacy and Civil Liberties ? * Technology and Jobs: New jobs ? No jobs? Rethinking work * Local Initiatives in Information Access * Elections 1996: Towards a Technology Platform plus workshops, hands-on demos, and a virtual conference Contact: http://www.cs.uchicago.edu/discussions/cpsr/ http://www.cpsr.org/home cpsrannmtg@cpsr.org Managing the Privacy Revolution, Washington, DC, Oct. 31-Nov. 1 Contact: 201 996-1154 Assoc. for Practical and Professional Ethics, St. Louis, MO, Feb. 29-March 2 Submissions deadline is Oct. 31, 1995. Contact: appe@indiana.edu 812 855-6450 812 855-3315 Computers, Freedom, and Privacy, M.I.T., Cambridge, MA, March 27-30, 1996. Proposal Submission deadline: 9/1/95. Contact: web.mit.edu/cfp96 cfp96-info@mit.edu Technological Assaults on Privacy, Rochester, NY, April 18-20, 1996. Paper drafts by Feb. 1, 1996. Contact: privacy@rit.edu 716 475-6643 716 475-7120 (fax) ------------------------------ From: "Prof. L. P. Levine" Date: 04 Aug 1995 08:22:16 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Total Surveillance on the Highway Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Taken from RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Thursday 3 Aug 1995 Volume 17 : Issue 23 FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS (comp.risks) ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, Peter G. Neumann, moderator Date: 01 Aug 1995 17:51:20 -0700 From: Phil Agre Subject: Total surveillance on the highway A controversy is growing around the failure of "Intelligent Transportation System" programs in the United States to exercise any leadership in the adoption of technologies for privacy protection. As deployment of these systems accelerates, some of the transportation authorities have begun to recognize the advantages of anonymous toll collection technologies. For example, if you don't have any individually identifiable records then you won't have to respond to a flood of subpoenas for them. Many, however, have not seen the point of protecting privacy, and some have expressed an active hostility to privacy concerns, claiming that only a few fanatics care so much about privacy that they will decline to participate in surveillance- oriented systems. That may in fact be true, for the same reason that only a few fanatics refuse to use credit cards. But that does not change the advantages to nearly everyone of using anonymous technologies wherever they exist. Let me report two developments, one bright and one dark. On the bright side, at least one company is marketing anonymous systems for automatic toll collection in the United States: AT/Comm Incorporated, America's Cup Building, Little Harbor, Marblehead MA 01945; phone (617) 631-1721, fax -9721. Their pitch is that decentralized systems reduce both privacy invasions and the hassles associated with keeping sensitive records on individual travel patterns. Another company has conducted highway-speed trials of an automatic toll-collection mechanism based on David Chaums digital cash technology: Amtech Systems Corporation, 17304 Preston Road, Building E-100, Dallas TX 75252; phone: (214) 733-6600, fax -6699. Because of the total lack of leadership on this issue at the national level, though, individuals need to do what they can to encourage local transportation authorities to use technologies of anonymity. It's not that hard: call up your local state Department of Transportation or regional transportation authority, ask to talk to the expert on automatic toll collection, find out what their plans are in that area, and ask whether they are planning to use anonymous technologies. Then call up the local newspaper, ask to talk to the reporter who covers technology and privacy issues, and tell them what you've learned. On the dark side, here is a quotation from a report prepared for the State of Washington's Department of Transportation by a nationally prominent consulting firm called JHK & Associates (page 6-9): Cellular Phone Probes. Cellular phones can be part of the backbone of a region-wide surveillance system. By distributing sensors (receivers) at multiple sites (such as cellular telephone mast sites), IVHS technology can employ direction finding to locate phones and to identify vehicles where appropriate. Given the growing penetration of cellular phones (i.e., estimated 22% of all cars by 2000), further refinements will permit much wider area surveillance of vehicle speeds and origin-destination movements. This is part of a larger discussion of technologies of surveillance that can be used to monitor traffic patterns and individual drivers for a wide variety of purposes, with and without individuals' consent and knowledge. The report speaks frankly of surveillance as one of three functionalities of the IVHS infrastructure. (The others are communications and data processing.) The means of surveillance are grouped into "static (roadway-based)", "mobile (vehicle-based)", and "visual (use of live video cameras)". The static devices include "in-pavement detectors", "overhead detectors", "video image processing systems", and "vehicle occupancy detectors". The mobile devices include various types of "automatic vehicle identification", "automatic vehicle location", "smart cards", and the just-mentioned "cellular phone probes". The visual devices are based on closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras that can seve a wide range of purposes. The underlying problem here, it seems to me, is an orientation toward centralized control: gather the data, pull it into regional management centers, and start manipulating traffic flows by every available means. Another approach, much more consonant with the times, would be to do things in a decentralized fashion: protecting privacy through total anonymity and making aggregate data available over the Internet and wireless networks so that people can make their own decisions. Total surveillance and centralized control has been the implicit philosophy of computer system design for a long time. But the technology exists now to change that, and I can scarcely imagine a more important test case than the public roads. People need to use roads to participate in the full range of associations (educational, political, social, religious, labor, charitable, etc etc) that make up a free society. If we turn the roads into a zone of total surveillance then we chill that fundamental right and undermine the very foundation of freedom. -- Phil Agre, UCSD ------------------------------ From: "Prof. L. P. Levine" Date: 08 Aug 1995 13:00:00 -0600 (CST) Subject: Info on CPD Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee The Computer Privacy Digest is a forum for discussion on the effect of technology on privacy or vice versa. The digest is moderated and gatewayed into the USENET newsgroup comp.society.privacy (Moderated). Submissions should be sent to comp-privacy@uwm.edu and administrative requests to comp-privacy-request@uwm.edu. This digest is a forum with information contributed via Internet eMail. Those who understand the technology also understand the ease of forgery in this very free medium. Statements, therefore, should be taken with a grain of salt and it should be clear that the actual contributor might not be the person whose email address is posted at the top. Any user who openly wishes to post anonymously should inform the moderator at the beginning of the posting. He will comply. If you read this from the comp.society.privacy newsgroup and wish to contribute a message, you should simply post your contribution. As a moderated newsgroup, attempts to post to the group are normally turned into eMail to the submission address below. On the other hand, if you read the digest eMailed to you, you generally need only use the Reply feature of your mailer to contribute. If you do so, it is best to modify the "Subject:" line of your mailing. Contributions to CPD should be submitted, with appropriate, substantive SUBJECT: line, otherwise they may be ignored. They must be relevant, sound, in good taste, objective, cogent, coherent, concise, and nonrepetitious. Diversity is welcome, but not personal attacks. Do not include entire previous messages in responses to them. Include your name & legitimate Internet FROM: address, especially from .UUCP and .BITNET folks. Anonymized mail is not accepted. All contributions considered as personal comments; usual disclaimers apply. All reuses of CPD material should respect stated copyright notices, and should cite the sources explicitly; as a courtesy; publications using CPD material should obtain permission from the contributors. Contributions generally are acknowledged within 24 hours of submission. If selected, they are printed within two or three days. The moderator reserves the right to delete extraneous quoted material. He may change the SUBJECT: line of an article in order to make it easier for the reader to follow a discussion. He will not, however, alter or edit or append to the text except for purely technical reasons. A library of back issues is available on ftp.cs.uwm.edu [129.89.9.18]. Login as "ftp" with password identifying yourid@yoursite. The archives are in the directory "pub/comp-privacy". People with gopher capability can most easily access the library at gopher.cs.uwm.edu. Mosaic users will find it at gopher://gopher.cs.uwm.edu. This following line will be deleted in future listings: Older archives are also held at ftp.pica.army.mil [129.139.160.133]. ---------------------------------+----------------------------------------- Leonard P. Levine | Moderator of: Computer Privacy Digest Professor of Computer Science | and comp.society.privacy University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee | Post: comp-privacy@uwm.edu Box 784, Milwaukee WI 53201 | Information: comp-privacy-request@uwm.edu | Gopher: gopher.cs.uwm.edu levine@cs.uwm.edu | Mosaic: gopher://gopher.cs.uwm.edu ---------------------------------+----------------------------------------- ------------------------------ End of Computer Privacy Digest V7 #010 ****************************** .